Becoming Unhinged
by firstForward
Summary: A series of meetings between the spirit of the Ring and Mai. One person struggling to change, to be better; the other rushing forward to a final battle with the man he hates.


Becoming Unhinged

With one hand resting lightly on the railing, she walked with no discernable purpose, head tilted to look out at the crashing waves though her eyes suggested she was seeing anything but water. Had the clothing been fitted around any other woman, he would have assumed her to just be easy —but the form hugging skirt and blouse were on her, and she was notably manipulative. She used her good looks as a way to throw her opponents off their game, perhaps, or maybe she took pride in the appreciative glances and needed the boost in confidence. As he took in the sight of her flipping her hair casually over one shoulder, smirking out at salty foam and deep darkness, it occurred to him that his guesses could be wrong. It was possible that she just liked to dress that way. Some people did have bad taste in clothing, after all. His host, for example.

"If you're going to ask me out, honey, give it up. I got on this boat to duel, not to strike up a relationship." She called out airily in his direction.

He scowled from the shadows, and stepped out from around the corner. The woman did not even turn her head to look in his direction. He was nothing to her, and he knew that. "Naïve children are the majority of the crowd here. But you're different. I can tell."

Shooting him a cutting look, she started and gave him a once-over, clearing not expecting someone like him to have been the one watching her. Though what she had been expecting, he didn't know. He wore scuffed sneakers and neat pants, ironed the day before. A sweater over a shirt with a collar. He was aware that he must have looked like the rest of them. Young. Unused to the trials of life. Someone that she could crush without a thought. "Itching for a fight? I can be your first opponent when we get to the island, if you like," she returned, still in that breezy tone like she could have cared less.

It wasn't the most obvious of clues that told him that he shouldn't probe any further, but he had been watching her rather thoughtfully, and so he noticed the tenseness of her shoulders even in the darkness. I can't ask her why she's here, or what her purpose is, if I want the conversation to continue smoothly, he thought. This is not a woman who trusts easily. "I know you overheard that Yuugi Mutou split his star chips to allow his friend a go at the tournament. I was hoping to encourage you to take Joey out of it."

Her fingers clenched around the railing briefly, and her eyes narrowed. Slipping his hands into his pockets, he kept up a neutral expression and wondered if she could be fooled into thinking he wasn't dangerous. "That's an odd request," she murmured, now more interested in the conversation, "what, you can't do it yourself?"

There was no helping the twitch of his mouth into a slight smirk, but he fought it down within an instant and spoke in a monotonous tone. "Let's just say I have more important things to concern myself with. But either way, Joey needs to be kicked off of the island. He's like a pillar for Yuugi. With one supporting friend knocked out from under him, he'll be easier to defeat."

The laugh that left her throat was unexpected, and even she seemed surprised as she lifted one hand up to cover her mouth and muffle the snickers. Pleasantly amused now, she taunted him. "You can't be serious. I'd heard that Yuugi had defeated Kaiba, but let's get this one thing straight, kid. A duelist doesn't need anyone but herself to win. In a game, that's the only person that you can trust. Just you and your own instincts." She was looking at him in an almost questioning manner now, as though she was waiting for a rebuttal. But he only stared back unblinkingly, calculatingly. She'll be in for a rude awakening, he thought. It was Yuugi's friends that had helped him to defeat me, once before. And it's all too likely that they'll help him through this tournament. So they need to be knocked away from him.

Or...he thought suddenly, a gleam coming to his eyes, they could be used against him. I just need a better strategy than before. A better way to use them...

"An exceptional duelist like Yuugi, who defeated Kaiba, of all people," she continued, waving a finger at him, "would be someone who could stand strong on his own. I'm sure of it."

"Think what you like," he shrugged. His interest for using her was dying with each new idea flashing through his head, and the scenario that they painted was becoming more and more plausible by the second.

She stood perfectly still, several feet away, considering him quietly. Coming to a decision, he offered a casual smile and turned away. There was no sound from his shoes as he strode down the deck to disappear into the night, and the woman he left standing with one hand on the railing only shivered as a rush of air rolled over her skin.

White hair, and dull and drab clothing. Although his appearance hadn't been very striking, she would be remembering him for days to come, always picturing the exact slip of his emotionless mask during their conversation. The slight peeling away of his calm appearance to reveal the cold expression underneath. A brief view of teeth, and eyes like hard soot.

But she had dreams to focus on that overwhelmed her thoughts of an encounter with someone who didn't even have a name, and she soon forgot about him.

xXx

There would have been no recognition on his part if she were not wearing bright violet. It was an obnoxious sort of colour, and it had an attention-grabbing quality to it that had him turning his head to glance at the person covered in it.

Congregating in a small square mostly dominated by a miniature clock tower were crowd of people all enthusiastically talking about Duel Monsters. She stood right in the thick of it, a travelling bag slung over one shoulder and both eyes on the cards being traded around her. He knew the reason for the crowd, but was surprised to see her there. Evidently she had a good dueling record and a rare card on her, or else she wouldn't have been invited. He himself was not there on invitation, however; it was a free world and he could walk where he liked. And he did have an interest in the tournament...

It was almost an art to walk so obviously toward someone without them having the slightest inkling of his presence, or so he liked to think. No one else really noticed him, either, for he neither had a deck out nor showed any signs of wanting to see the cards in anyone's hands. When someone did glance up at him, their eyes turned away soon after, forgetting him instantly. And so he stopped at her side without catching much attention, quiet and thoughtful.

"Have a better strategy this time around?" He asked in the polite tone of his host, slipping into his voice so easily it was like second nature. Her head jerked to look down at him like she wanted to lash out for being snuck up on, and he backed up on impulse, widening his eyes significantly to indicate innocence.

She didn't buy it. "You," she accused.

"Battle City will only be an uphill battle, even in the preliminaries," he gestured to the crowd around them, and she crossed her arms pointedly over her chest. Pretending not to notice her annoyance at his being there, he added, "And some of the participants are duelists from Pegasus' tournament, you realize. They'll have a great deal of experience not to be taken lightly."

"I get it —you're the lecturing type. Think you're so much better than me, so you can just hand out advice without anyone asking for it, right? Well I won't stand for it. So beat off before I beat you with my Harpies, kid." She snapped.

There was something all too familiar about the way he turned his head to look at her, and it hit her then that she might have seen a similar expression on a movie villain. One of those old thriller types. She scrunched her eyebrows and tried to determine if he was indeed eyeing her neck for the consideration of how to lob it off, and then abruptly let out an uncomfortable laugh and brushed off the thought. "I'm sorry if I offended you," he said with a frown. He was skinnier than her, shorter than her. And more importantly, he was a friend of Yuugi's. Perfectly harmless.

"No...I...you know how it is. I have to maintain an image. I have my duelist's pride, you understand. So I can't go listening to your thoughts on the subject, I have to figure things out on my own. You know?"

A rather pleased smile wormed its way across his face. "I understand. We're a little alike, I think. Both standing strong on our own, without the help of friends like Yuugi. Both worked our way to where we are now through our own effort and skill, and no one else's."

She was giving him a rather confused look now. "No, I had some help in Duelist Kingdom. Not that I want to admit it. But it's the truth. We're not really alike at all, I can assure you. You have no idea what my life was like growing up. But I climbed my way up to something better. I wanted to be as independent as you can get in the real world."

"And?"

So calculating, his voice, saying exactly as much as he wanted and never enough to allow her to guess at what he was thinking. The tone: so carefully gentle, curious, and thoughtful. She found herself shifting on her feet without meaning to. This was someone better dealt with at a more respectful distance, perhaps. No...she was just on edge from the prospect of the start of the tournament. Reading into things that weren't there. "And it turned out that even when you can make your own way in life without any help, you're still not going to grow as a person unless you accept that it's other people that help you become who you want to be in life. That help you to obtain your dreams."

He didn't like hearing this, and though there wasn't enough in his expression for her to make the assumption, she was sure of it. "Still have faith in dreams after living in the _real world_, huh?"

Awkwardly, she offered him a grin and a wink, simply because it was in her personality to be teasing. "You better believe it." He was merely frowning, but it was off-putting enough to make her pull away and give him a short wave. Seconds later she had disappeared into the crowd, leaving him standing there, still with a frown on his face.

She'd been turned into the cheerful carefree type by the Pharaoh's vessel and his friends, it seemed. Relaxed, content. Determined to go far, but keen putting the past behind her. His frown turned into a sneer. Unlike her, he would never let go of the memories he had. The reasons he needed to win against Yuugi. They were carefully nurtured; the feelings enforced. And he would be stronger than her because of it. Because he was someone who could stand to remember the pain.

His attention turned to the duelists around him, to the cards being flashed in many a hand. Perhaps he could take this opportunity to collect a few rare cards and improve his deck. There were many foreigners and out-of-towners in the vicinity, after all, and surely one of them had something worthwhile.

Moving forward, he started to pay more heed to the voices around him, and took sudden interest in a duelist nearby. Had he mentioned fiends?

xXx

Deep blackness extended in all directions, although; it would be more accurate to say that it was not darkness at all, but Shadows, which were far blacker. It did not seem possible for there to be a colour deeper than black, but this was logic for those who had never stepped out of the Light Realm.

He stared outwards and inwards at the nothingness of it all, feeling his lungs expand with each breath of air that did not actually exist: for he was a spirit, and since he had just been forcibly ejected out of his physical vessel, he no longer had any true senses nor any bodily functions. So he stared outward, not seeing, not hearing, intently focussed on the tiny bond in the back of his mind that connected him to life. His host, in some other portion of the Shadow Realm, unconscious. He focussed on it and breathed and pretended that he could feel air rushing into his imaginary lungs, and clenched fists that were only projections of his mind.

Shadows loomed around the spirit, as unchanging as ever, wrapping around the newest creature that had been sent into their depths. They knew this being, actually. He had been sent there before. But just like the previous times, the spirit did not seem to notice the encroaching presence of the void of the Realm, sucking him in. Shadow creatures with some amount of intelligence recognized that the creature before them was already dead, but chained him in darkness just the same, and crawled over his prone form, drawing out the life force that connected him to a being far kinder.

The spirit, senseless and floating in the nothingness, had only his own thoughts for company but nonetheless felt the odd drain of energy. Something was pulling at his connection to his host, draining the teen of life through the spirit, and this infuriated him. If his connection was destroyed, then he would have poor luck with finding a new vessel for his soul. So he seethed and blinked imaginary eyes, and tried to picture what could be causing it though he could see nothing.

"It's _you_."

Out of the Shadows, a human-sized hourglass housing the mind of a certain individual spun into view of the spirit. Misshapen monsters were crawling all over his form; clawing, biting, tearing, lapping up the shining life being eked out of him. The spirit himself did not seem particularly perturbed by this: he did not lash out, or yell. In fact, he did not react at all, other than the slight narrowing of eyes, like he was squinting. Was he blind?

The mind in the hourglass shifted eagerly and desperately and angrily through the sand that was piling up around her waist, and slammed her hands on the glass. "Hello! Hello! You can hear me, can't you?" She shouted, pounding and pounding.

Her prison had been surrounded by cruel images of friends not able to see her pain, but this image was so unlike the others that she knew it must be real. Her captor must not have foreseen the possibility of her coming across the newest person who had been sent to the Shadows, and she took this opportunity to redouble her efforts to get out of the hourglass.

It both shocked and relieved her to hear the spirit speak out, and for a second she thought that he must have noticed her after all. But this was not the case: his eyes still stared unseeingly, limbs limp like he was numb. The mouth forming the words struggled to open and wrap around the consonants, and it came out as more of a mumble than anything. "Cease your attacks on my host or I will destroy you." His teeth were gritted. He did not look capable of destroying anything.

Had that Egyptian sent him to this place after her?

"Have you figured it out yet?" Said a sad voice below her.

Craning her neck to see who had spoken, delight and excitement rushing through her system —she was being acknowledged!— she froze when she saw exactly who was standing below the spinning hourglass.

An exact identical of the teen being attacked by the creatures stared with uneasy eyes at the scene, shuddering with arms clutched to his chest. "You can hear me," she whispered in miserable relief. He glanced up at her, and offered a wavering smile, face still scrunched in an anxious expression. Pressing her nose against the glass, she croaked out, "I don't care how there's two of you, I don't care, okay? Please help me, get me out of here. You're one of Yuugi's friends, so you'll help me, won't you?" She stared at him with widened eyes, mind racing with confusion at what should have been an emotionless mask on the teen's face. But he instead looked scared.

Or was his trembling really from some pain he was suffering?

"Only the defeat of the one who placed you in there will shatter the glass," murmured the teen, pityingly. Her eyes were wet, but she likely hadn't noticed, and he turned away to avoid looking at the horror that was sure to be stretching across her face.

Sand was everywhere, in her clothing, her hair. It fell down over her eyes, and she blinked rapidly and watched grains of it pour down from her eyelashes. And she began to tremble like the teen below her, and in the misery of the moment, had a sudden moment of clarity. "You're in pain because those creatures attacking the other you are hurting you through him, right? So why aren't you doing anything?"

I'm trying so hard to get out of something reason says I cannot get out of, were the unspoken words. Why are you doing nothing when you have the means to actually get yourself out of the situation?

"I'll die more slowly, if they suck out my life force through my connection to him," explained the teen, teeth chattering, chin down to his collarbone. A soft, pained noise made its way past pursed lips. "I have to stay quiet, so they won't notice me. The creatures of the Shadows."

Creatures with more limbs than torso, creatures like little blobs of muck. Slimy ones, likely dripping a substance more poisonous than any earthly venom. Biting and tearing and skittering all over the teen in front of them. Totally absorbed in their prey, whose eyes saw nothing, whose ears heard nothing: because he was dead, and had no body to use those senses. She would have felt sick to her imaginary stomach, if she could have felt even one more emotion on top of the pile of feelings she had already succumbed to.

"He's dying." She said, nearly biting her tongue at the terrifying word that had escaped her lips.

A shake of a head. "They can't kill someone who's already dead. And I think, in the end, that he would find his way out of here, eventually. He always does." She got some sense of finality from his words, like they were undisputable. Like every syllable was the absolute truth. He wore an expression of acceptance and exhaustion. The pain was wearing away at him, it seemed.

"He's like the spirit in Yuugi's Puzzle," she realized, scrubbing her eyes, trying to remove the sand clouding her vision. Sand covered her skin in a fine layer more tight fitting than her clothing. She scrubbed and scrubbed, trying to rub her skin raw of the substance, hands moving in a flurry. The teen below her nearly collapsed, but managed to remain upright though his knees wobbled. Across from them, a hole had been gouged into the spirit.

"Yes," he said to her, dully. She looked up from her body and clung to his voice in her mind, needing to think about anything but her situation. "He's an ancient spirit from another time, just like the Pharaoh. Dead. Living through me." Another wavering smile, sad. She stared back without blinking, letting the sand clog her eyes. "Do you pity him?"

There was no thought to her answer. "No. Because at least...he has someone to connect to, in the end."

He did not move from his spot, then, silently agreeing to stay by her whilst her mind suffocated to death.

xXx

He was perched on a low brick wall surrounding the convenience store, one elbow resting on his knees. There was a cold, blank stare present on his face that she was starting to remember did not belong to the body at all, but to a creature possessing it. And he was eyeing her. She wondered if it had anything to do with the necklace drooping down her blouse. A green stone shimmered in the dying light.

In fact he had noticed the stone, and was rather amused at this observation. The icy woman, turned kind friend, turned icy all over again. He breathed in tainted air, and could only smell gasoline and some exotic perfume, permeating through the space between them. He smirked.

"What are you staring at," she shot at him.

"I am staring at," he paused, enjoying the fidgeting she was doing, "a woman who thought she could go far in life, if she only tried hard and trusted no one but herself and her own gut instincts. A duelist who was broken once, by a few cliché lines from a group who had more important things on their mind than her. A woman who finally got hit hard for her efforts at playing the soft-natured friend, because she couldn't stand the pain of being on her own anymore. She died in the Shadows that day. I'm staring at the woman who went back to what she was all that time ago on an island, the person who cared about no one but herself and her own goals. Congratulations. You've gone in a circle."

She could have been spitting fire for all the fury on her face, for all the green of the stone around her neck. Her hand jerked down into a pocket of her jacket, and she pulled out a deck. "I'm stronger than I've ever been," she sneered, waving the cards in the air with a look she probably thought exuded confidence. He was not impressed. "And I can prove it."

The smell was really starting to bother his nose, the sharp tang of gasoline and the thick layers of perfume. He dropped down from his perch with a smooth swing of his legs, and put his hands in his pockets with a bored sigh. "Say what you like," he returned, and started to walk past her and her motorcycle, out of the parking lot. She glared and shifted in her boots, hand clenched tightly around her precious cards. "But I'm not the one who thought it would be a good idea to take up employ with a man interested in using me for his own ends. Nor do I wear his brand around my neck."

"Hey—!"

But he was already out of ear shot, harsh white hair winking out of her sightline behind a line of shrubbery. So for a minute she stood there, completely still, just clutching her cards.

Slowly, so slowly, trying to convince herself that she was doing okay.

xXx

It was all she could do to keep the hot coffee from spewing out of her mouth when she saw him, moving past her to grab the drink being slid over the counter towards him. Cool dead eyes stared at her from behind a living face. "The spirit of the Ring," she said evenly once she had swallowed the caffeine in her mouth successfully. She hoped her face was as cool as his eyes.

"So we meet again," he mused, popping the lid of a glass bottle. The overdramatic line was not lost on her.

"This isn't some corny movie scene," she threw back at him.

"No?"

They were taking up space at the pickup counter, and after a few gestures from the workers behind the sandwich display case, moved aside to let other people through. She suddenly felt awkward, used to being derisive towards him, but after the whole fiasco with Dartz she'd promised herself a change. There was a need in her heart to be someone worthy of the friendships she had, someone kind-hearted like Yuugi, brave like Joey. Forgiving and willing to move on. Snapping at the spirit before her would be working against her attempts to be a better person.

For all the deadness of his gaze, she was aware that he was looking at her sharply, calculatingly. "You're back to being their friend again, I see," he observed. She was slightly taken aback. Was the change so evident on her face?

"I'm a fickle woman," she told him dryly. This got an answering amused smile from him, a rare thing indeed. She hadn't realized he could smile...though it struck her then that the expression was weighed down by a hundred thoughts he wasn't speaking aloud. He was entirely too careful about how long he let the smile linger on his face.

Busying himself for a moment with his drink, he let her study him without comment before twisting the lid back on the bottle and dropping it into a backpack slung over one shoulder. "This will be our last meeting," he told her, for no other reason than to see the reaction on her face.

She was indeed surprised. "Oh, I don't know about that," she shrugged, "even though I'm leaving Japan, I don't doubt that this won't be the last time I'll ever see the place. And you're stuck here, what with your...condition. Unless your host has plans on moving."

The smile reappeared for an instant, and a chuckle left his throat. "So ignorant."

"What is that supposed to mean?" She scowled.

But he was not paying any attention to her voice any longer, and had taken two steps forward, reaching up with one hand to brush his fingers over her cheek. The questions died in her throat; her shoulders tensed. For she was not as ignorant as he believed, and knew full well that the man in the teen's body was far more capable of using it than the teen himself. Perhaps it was the way he carried himself, like a coiling snake, always shifting his weight and twisting his head to stay aware of his ever-changing environment.

Two fingers made their way over her cheek bones, past the corner of her eye to tap gently at a temple. "What do you think you're doing," she hissed, with some reservation.

Another low rumble that she supposed was meant to be a laugh left his mouth. "I don't exactly know. I...hmm." He laughed again, and she pushed his hand away in irritation now. For the two steps he had taken forward, she matched them in the opposite direction. A curious, dark look came over the spirit. "I guess I just wanted to touch a creature that has been redeemed by the Pharaoh and his lot," he mocked, perfectly sure of himself.

"You're crazy." She decided.

He continued speaking without acknowledging her statement. "You, who has fought against them and lost. You, who has changed so many times that it's a wonder that they still have any faith in you at all." Abruptly, he brought up his hand to his own cheek, humming under his breath as he thought. She did not move from her place, still perplexed by his actions and wary because he'd just proven to be unpredictable. "Such a different feel from my host. You've both been tainted...but you from choice. It's rather...interesting to say the least."

Spinning on her heel and thinking that she could get to her terminal early, she started to walk away from him to somewhere in the airport where she could drink her coffee in peace. A firm look was shot over her shoulder at the spirit. "Enjoy your flight...wherever you're going." She said, partly sarcastically.

He hummed to himself again as she left. "She was the first to not pull away immediately at my touch..." Then he looked down at his pale hands, the delicate hands that did not belong to him, and amended, "Save for you, dear host. But you cannot exactly avoid me, no matter how hard you try."

There was no echoing answer from inside his head, of course. The true owner of the body had long since lost consciousness, and was completely unaware of the events playing out. And his possessor was not about to wake him up.

The spirit turned, and left for his own terminal.

She would be remembering him for days to come, always with the slight smirk, the dead eyes. And she would shiver as she felt air against her cheek, a touch as light as his fingers had been. But she would put his words, all of the words that he had ever spoken to her, out of her mind. Because she had made a promise to herself, to change, and she was nothing like him. Nothing like the woman she'd been. And she would move on from her past mistakes, and would not lose her way again.

To the spirit, the encounters with the woman who had not flinched away from him were as unimportant as everything else that did not have to do with his immediate plans for the future. She was forgotten about rather easily.

There was an ultimate Shadow Game to be preparing for.

Two planes roared away from the Domino airport, each heading in a different direction. Clouds parted and were sifted through the engines, and sunlight reflected off of the metal of the wings.

The End.


End file.
